Private individuals don't own forest land in Germany -- all state property.  Zoning, until recently, tended to keep the use of land the same -- forests, agricultural, urban etc.  This policy kept urban sprawl to a minimum, but also meant that new land tracts for houses were uncommon.

The houses built in Germany are usually three stories.  If a story is not rented out, it is used by one generation of the family.  As a generation aged, they would move a floor up.  Thus, there could be three generations of a family (old, middle aged, young with children) living in the same house.  It sounds like happy, solid families ... but the details of how ownership get transferred are ugly (as in formal contracts being signed that specify what the gaining family will do for their parents in exchange for ownership of the house).

But the recent trend is an attack on house owners in the name of "saving the environment".  The apartment dwellers have been treated as a lower class forever; those people are used to their lot now.  The house owners are now getting pressure from radicalized bureaucrats.  The squeeze play is working its way up the social ladder.

Cheers